Mittell: The Effects Of Television On American Culture

Chapters 7, 8 and 9 were all about looking at the different effects of television on American culture and on the lives of everyday Americans through programming. In chapter 11, Mittell looks at television through a different perspective in order to get new insight into the effects of television on America and the American lifestyle. In order to understand Mittell’s approach to analyzing television in this chapter, it is important to look at the medium of television from a technological standpoint, independent of produced content. The method that allows Mittell to introduce the primary method for analyzing television from a technological standpoint, also known as media ecology, which analyzes the different possibilities of communication from …show more content…
One of the first things covered in Mittell’s analysis of television history is the development of the National Television System Committee (NTSC) that came about as a result of the development of electronic television in 1910’s and 1920’s. The role of the NTSC, that still continues today, is to dictate issues of signal encoding and tube specifications, two of which are important factors in determining television screen resolution. While this could be seen as a good thing, Mittell argues that it was not. Due to the enforcement of technological standards, innovations such as CBS’s color television system were not implemented and the strict standards of screen quality lead to higher resolution in other television broadcasting standards that were adopted later around the world. Mittell also talks about the proliferation of satellites and their effect on production and television consumption practices. He argues that satellite technology helps to bring the world closer together by eliminating geographical boundaries, which allow television and other communication systems to travel the globe